On July 21, scouts, summer campers and Ecoteens had a chance to get their most pressing climate questions answered from Ian Joughin, the leader of the Greenland Glacier Expedition that Chris has been writing about here through a live satellite link to the campsite in Greenland; later that night, adults got their turn. You can listen in, below.

The team is now back from the Greenland; here’s Chris’ last post on what they learned.

North Lake and the Journey Home

It has been a whirlwind since my last post—a hectic final week on the Greenland ice sheet studying two glacial lakes, a helicopter transfer back to the town of Ilulissat, and a long series of flights taking us home. Warm socks and down jackets are now a thing of the past—I’m typing this dispatch in 87-degree heat in Seattle (I know that’s not really hot for Texans, but it’s quite a tough adjustment for me after a month of subfreezing temperatures!)

Our final week on the ice was dedicated to exploring two nearby lakes, one of which had recently drained (dubbed “North Lake”) and another that was partially full of water when we arrived (dubbed “North North Lake”).

North Lake made the news earlier this year when Dr. Sarah Das (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) and Dr. Ian Joughin (University of Washington Applied Physics Lab/Polar Science Center) published a pair of papers in the journal Science about the spectacular draining event that they captured with their instrumentation in July 2006. That summer, a giant hole called a moulin opened up in the lake bed and drained the entire water volume (which is a lot; this lake is several kilometers long!) in an hour and a half. This year, the lake was already empty when we arrived (in fact, we had already heard from colleagues that it drained on July 10, the day we arrived at South Lake camp), so the research team had the freedom to explore the empty lake basin on foot.

Our visits to the North Lake basin revealed a bizarre landscape of car-sized blocks, canyons, rivers and waterfalls. The variation in the landscape on the ice sheet, particularly in the drained lake beds, is staggering. I expected it to be, well, flat, and white.

What we saw was quite different—towering blocks of pushed-up ice, rivers of freezing melt water carving their way through 60-foot deep canyons, gaping bottomless cracks and holes. The color of the ice ranges from opaque white to clear to bluebird blue. To my glaciologist companions, the landscape was also an open book. The blocks indicate where major cracks occurred (the blocks are pieces of the ice sheet that are broken loose during the cracking), and the rivers lead us to the crevasses (cracks) or holes (moulins) where the water was still pouring through the ice sheet to the bedrock. If you put your ear to the cracks, you can hear the water echoing in the depths.

It will still be some time before the final picture of the 2008 lake draining can be told. The scientists had only a brief amount of time to examine their instruments and prepare them for another year of data collecting before we had to pack up and fly out. In the coming months, scientists will be examining the data their instruments collected over the previous year. Dr. Mark Behn, a scientist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Geology and Geophysics department (and resident “icequakes” expert), had this comment about the data he did look at:

“Even with a 10 minute look, I can see that the quality of the data is good, which tells me the instruments are working. We can also see the timing of large cracking events that drain the lakes, which stand out as dramatic spikes on the record.”

Thank you to everyone who came in to the museum on July 21 to talk with moderator Twila Moon and Dr. Ian Joughin live from the ice. Stay tuned for future Live from the Poles expeditions on the Polar Discovery website. Until then, best wishes and thanks again for reading,

Are melting glaciers causing sea levels to rise? A team from Utrecht University says no. A team from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute is exploring that issue this month – check back here for updates from Chris Linder.

And you thought the Sun was harsh – “O” stars in the Rosetta Nebula “can be a hundred times the size and over a thousand times brighter” – and they destroy planets.

Our guest blogger today is Chris Linder, a Research Associate at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. He is the project manager and field photographer for the National Science Foundation-sponsored Live from the Poles project. From July 8-25, Chris will be posting daily updates about a research team studying glaciers in Greenland to the Polar Discovery website. In addition, he will be making live phone calls from the ice to museums across the US, including HMNS. Check the full schedule here.

My name is Chris Linder; I’m a photographer and researcher from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts. From July 8-25, I’ll be writing Beyond Bones posts once a week from a research campsite on top of an ice sheet in Greenland.

The researchers, from WHOI and the University of Washington, are studying the lakes that form on top of the ice sheet in summer. In previous years, measurements have shown that these lakes, which can be up to mile long, drain very suddenly and completely in a few hours. The water flows through a massive crack, called a crevasse, straight down (roughly a mile) to the bedrock. The amount of water flowing per second is greater than Niagara Falls.

A Glacial Lake

Once the water gets to the bedrock, it acts as a lubricating layer, allowing the glacier to move more quickly. Using a suite of long-term monitoring instruments, we are hoping to learn exactly how quickly, and the effect that these slip-slide events are having on the overall speed of Greenland’s glaciers. To see an animation of how this process works, click here.

Why should we care what happens in Greenland? When glacier ice oozes off the land and into the ocean, it adds to the volume of ocean water, and causes the sea level to rise. Since 38% of the world’s population lives within 60 miles of the coast, you can see how a slowly disappearing coastline affects billions of people worldwide. With the knowledge of how the lakes are affecting glacial motion, scientists who create climate change models will be able to more accurately determine the future impact of global warming on our coastlines.

In addition to these blog entries, I hope you’ll visit our expedition website to see daily photo essays about what the researchers are discovering about Greenland’s glaciers and life in the ice camp.

Me on the ice

So what am I doing now? In these last few days before I get on the long series of flights to Greenland, my task is to sort, fold, organize, squish, and pack roughly 200 pounds worth of photography and camping equipment into hard cases and waterproof duffel bags. Part of the problem is trying to imagine what I need to be wearing in subfreezing temperatures – when the current temperature is 80 degrees. Just 20 minutes ago, in fact, I realized that I hadn’t packed a single pair of socks!

I hope you tune in later this month when I post another entry to Beyond Bones—from the ice. Or, come to the museum on July 21st, when I’ll be calling the museum to answer questions from the public live over a satellite phone (6:30pm in the Burke Baker Planetarium).